Photo courtesy Canam Building Envelope Specialists

Building envelope expert, Tony Woods, left a significant mark on Canadian building performance.

Tony Woods, energy efficiency expert and frequent author for Construction Canada, passed away on May 8, after a battle with cancer.

The founder of Canam Building Envelope Specialists, Woods spent decades developing ways to diagnose building envelope flaws, established methods of calculating potential energy savings from leakage control work, and launched a line of weatherization products.

A physicist who graduated from the University of Hull (England) in 1959, Woods—armed with his trademark smoke pencil—gave numerous presentations at events ranging from Construct Canada to the national conferences of the American Concrete Institute (ACI) and the National Building Envelope Council of Canada (NBEC).

He contributed to 10 standards committees covering airtightness testing, ventilation, combustion safety, window installation, and sealants. Woods also participated in many federal, provincial, and utility development and demonstration programs, including several air leakage control projects, national moisture studies, and the Ontario Hydro 1000-House Audit Program.

Woods' tremendous impact on the envelope efficiency of North American buildings was recently acknowledged by the Building Performance Institute (BPI) as the group renamed one of its major honours after him. (Woods was the first Canadian to become a BPI affiliate.) Late last month, the institute gave out the inaugural Tony Woods Award for Excellence in Advancing the Home Performance Industry to Matt Golden of Sustainable Spaces Inc.

A member of Construction Specifications Canada (CSC), Woods regularly contributed articles to Construction Canada. His most recent feature, "Don't Forget Your ABCs," dealt with air barrier commissioning and appeared in the May 2009 issue. Previous articles included:
• "Better, Greener Buildings are in the Air"; (September 2008);
• "Pushing the Envelope: Compartmentalization in High-rise Buildings" (March 2008);
• "Boosting Insulation Performance with Air Barriers" (March 2007); and
• co-written with Steven Tratt, "Tightening the Building Envelope: HVAC brought into the fold" (March 2006).

Online donations may be made in Woods' memory to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's "Light the Night Walk" at www.lightthenight.org.